1. Field
This application relates to musical instrument accessories, and more specifically to a fingering device for stringed instruments. Such a device is to provide assistance in playing guitar barre chords by enabling a musician to deploy a finger sleeve with a raised flexible bar to contact and depress a number of strings while leaving the musician's finger available for fingerboard fretting.
2. Prior Art
The guitar is one of the most popular musical instruments world-wide. The playing of the guitar requires co-ordination and dexterity to be able to pluck or strum the strings with one hand while simultaneously depressing the strings with the other hand's fingers to create a variety of melodic sounds. The formation of chords is one of the first things a beginning guitarist learns. Chords are created by forming the fingers of the left hand (assuming a right-handed player, reversed for left-handed players) into various shapes on the guitar neck or fingerboard. These chord shapes are referred to as open chords and are named with letters such as C, A, G, E, and D and are the foundation for musical composition.
Once a guitarist is familiar with these chord shapes, most often the next step is to learn barre chords (or bar chords). Barre chords, which are also referred to as moveable chords, enable a guitarist to move the open chord shapes up and down the guitar fingerboard allowing for a wider range of musical sounds and includes the ability to incorporate additional chords such as B and F that are not usually played with open chords. The barre chord is formed by using the length of a single finger (most often the index finger) to simultaneously press down on a number of strings at certain intervals (referred to as frets) along the guitar fingerboard while using the remaining fingers of the same hand to form chord shapes. The pressing of the finger on the strings is similar to pressing a soft bar on the strings which is referred to as barring or bar pressure. This action alters the tones of the guitar and enables the guitarist to play chords not restricted by the nature of the guitar's open strings.
It is common knowledge in the music world, and more particularly in the guitar world, that the task of performing barre chords by pressing all or most of the strings in a fret simultaneously with a single finger is one of the most difficult and frustrating aspects of learning and playing guitar. Most often the notes of the chord will not ring clearly or will sound muted due to the strings not being depressed sufficiently or fully by the barring finger. One of the most common problems occurs as a result of one or more of the strings resting in the joint creases of the finger resulting in an inability to depress all of the strings with equal pressure. Many guitarists avoid songs that require the use of barre chords, opting for other chord options that may create a slightly similar sound, but are not a correct musical composition. It is also common knowledge that playing, or attempting to play barre chords for an extended period is tiring and creates joint pain in the wrist and fingers due to the amount of pressure required to press the strings firmly enough with the finger to produce a satisfactory sound.
In an attempt to address these issues, U.S. Pat. No. 5,390,371 to Sigward (1993) discloses a guitar glove that as one of its functions comprises a plurality of raised elongated cushioning strips running the length of the radial side of the index finger. The problem related to playing barre chords has been partially solved by the addition of the raised strips along the index finger but still has significant problems. In glove form the location of the raised strips are fixed to a set location on the finger in relation to how the glove sits on the hand, whereas a guitarist may find it suitable to adjust rotationally or vertically the raised strips to a different location on the finger such as farther to the radial side of the finger or directly in the middle on the underside of the finger. As well, in order to attain the benefit of the raised strips on the index finger, the user is required to wear an entire glove which would be cumbersome to the guitarist who prefers the natural feel of a bare hand, or who would like to remove or deploy the playing aid quickly as required. The glove is designed for right handed players and would require additional manufacturing costs to accommodate left-handed guitar players.
Several other slightly similar guitar finger attachments have been proposed—for example U.S. Pat. No. 3,638,525 to Sciurba et al. (1972), and U.S. Pat. No. 7,476,792 to Musser (2009). Although they both describe a finger attachment for depressing guitar strings while providing finger flexibility, they both require manual rotation on the finger to achieve alternate playing styles, whereas my invention describes a finger sleeve that requires no adjustment once in place on the finger. These and many other similar prior art designs have been described that provide a finger attachment to assist a musician in creating different musical sounds. In these examples, and others like them, the finger attachment is constructed of a hard material such as metal or plastic which when placed against the strings of a guitar create a specific desired sound described variously as steel, slide, or Hawaiian. These sounds depart drastically from the pure chord sound desired by a musician playing barre cords.
Lastly, U.S. Pat. No. 5,492,045 to Roblee (1996) discloses a quick release capo, designed for fretting the neck of a stringed instrument. In this design, a mechanism is attached to the fingerboard of a guitar or other stringed instrument at various fret positions. When employed, a padded bar is pressed firmly across the strings creating a barre. This design provides the musician the ability to perform barre chords, but requires that the user attach and detach the device when required at different fret positions. Although this design provides a new and quicker alternative to conventional capos, it would be significantly slower in transition from one location on a fingerboard to another than employing a finger sleeve to perform barre chords.
In this respect, the finger sleeve according to the present invention substantially departs from the conventional concepts and designs of the prior art, and in doing so, provides an apparatus primarily developed for the purpose of assisting a musician playing barre chords.
Therefore, it can be appreciated that there exists a need for a new and improved design to assist a musician when playing barre chords on a stringed musical instrument. In this regard, the present invention substantially fulfills this need.